A window into applied science supported by INL

Continuing the series of videos presenting the posts “Carbon Nanotubes” and “Production of Carbon Nanotubes“, on this occasion we approached to you the third video in the series entitled “How can see Carbon Nanotubes”, which explains the techniques that are used to visualize carbon nanotubes.

The project objective is to develop suitable nanoparticles to give to plastic material the best mechanical properties with less weight.

The idea is to replace the reinforced plastic with fiberglass and part of this fiberglass with nanoparticles, and as a result of that it is obtained a lighter material that maintains or improves their properties.

The development of this material would have many industrial applications, especially in sectors such as automotive to construction machinery.

A team of researchers from the University of La Rioja has managed to synthesize the first molecular switches activated by sunlight.

His research has been inspired by natural structures present in the retina. This work argues that when the light reaches the eyes of the person, it activates some of the proteins that make up the retina, causing a slight movement of rotation in the structure of its molecules. Inspired by this mechanism the research team has succeeded in synthesizing a new type of compounds that play such a mechanism. The incidence of sunlight makes the compost from one position to another, as if it were a tiny switch.

A big advantage over other compounds is the use of energy abundant, cheap and clean, it also does not damage the material on which it operates.

The small size of these compounds makes them particularly useful in biological and future applications of nanotechnology.

One of the most striking of nanotechnology is the quantum confinement or quantum dots: particles such as electrons are trapped in closed nano-structures, a phenomenon that generates the art optical and electronic properties with no equivalent in nature and with potential technological applications.

The study has overcome the difficulties that arise when creating regular structures capable of causing the confinement. The most prominent work is that regular confinement systems do not behave as independent, but interact with each other and form a new structure of electronic bands.

This finding would control different electronic properties of the surface of matter (in the case of this investigation, copper), which, in turn, would control different electronic properties, such as resistance.

The Numancia, football team of the Spaniard second division, will be the first football team wearing shirts produced in Spain with nanotechnology. The manufacture of the new shirts, called Ti-energy, is composed of silver and titanium nanoparticles.

The main properties of these shirts are stainless, antistatic and antibacterial, hundred percent breathable, waterproof and impermeable to any liquid.

With this technology, the water enters and leaves but the shirt did not get wet, so that the numantino players neither will be drenched in sweat, nor will be soaked and of course when it rains at the end of the match the shirt will be as clean as at the beginning.

The teams of the Italian soccer league, Atalanta and Parma, have used already these shirts with satisfactory results.

Halcyonics has acquired the Imaging Ellipsometry unit of Nanofilm Technologie GmbH, including its EP3 product line and highly skilled staff. Following this acquisition, all Halcyonics units and services will be placed in a new building.

Nanofilm developed, manufactured and distributed imaging ellipsometer and other analysis surface instrumentation, as well as accessories for surface analysis in materials research, biochips, flat panel displays, Langmuir-Blodgett films, and other fields.

Halcyonics provides solutions for active vibration isolation systems and are used in many fields of micro and nanotechnology.

INL – News

New INL researcher Marta Prado

Marta Prado is INL´s latest researcher and has just settled in in Braga. She has an advanced degree in Food Science and Technology and studies in Biology Science from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Marta has a PhD from the same university in the program of Nutrition, Bromatology and Food technology.

Between the years 1999 and 2006, our new Spanish colleague has been working as a researcher in the Faculty of Veterinary Sciences (Lugo, Spain) from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). Between 2006 and 2010, she has been working as Scientific Officer in the Institute of Reference Materials and Measurements from the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (EC-JRC-IRMM) in Geel, Belgium.

Most of her research experience is related with genomic analysis tools and its application to food analysis, since she had worked on the development and optimization of PCR-based methods for the control of food and animal feeds. In the INL, she will work on the application of magnetic nanobiosensors for the detection of ruminant origin meals in feed.